‘I should call Louisa now…… Huh?’

Unable to distinguish between light and darkness, she usually determined day and night by the feel of the air. But the air she felt now was strange. The air touching her skin was cool, indicating late night or dawn, but there was a strange smell. The smell of something burning and a faint but familiar scent…..

‘……Blood?’

The moment she sensed the acrid smoke and blood, Yerena’s face turned pale. The burning kingdom. Her father and mother dying before her eyes.

Her body trembled. She wrapped her arms around herself and forced strength into her legs to avoid collapsing.

And at that moment, her heightened hearing detected a sound from outside. Yerena’s face brightened at the realization that someone was coming.

But that was only momentary. The approaching footsteps sounded strange. Three… no, five sets of footsteps were heard. And none of them were familiar. As Yerena tensed her body in nervousness, the door flung open.

Only one person entered the room. Yerena realized that the flickering golden light belonged to no one she had seen before. Both the size and movement were unfamiliar.

“W-who are you?”

“……”

“I said, who are you……”

She suddenly remembered her current situation. Yerena warily asked again as the stranger approached her. The person who had walked right up to her raised his arm high. And the very next moment, a dull sound engulfed her.

Thud.

It happened before she could prepare to dodge or block. Only after Yerena collapsed to the floor and hit her head did she realize she had been slapped hard with a palm.

‘Huh?’

A ringing sound numbed her hearing. Her body wouldn’t move at all from the sudden shock. Yerena couldn’t even properly moan as she used all her strength to try to move her head.

“D*mn…… That b*stard…… Should have killed him right in front of me……”

Through the ringing, she could faintly hear the voice of the person standing over her. Though she couldn’t understand what he was saying, Yerena could tell that the one who had committed violence against her was the emperor. Startled, she twitched her hand while still collapsed.

“Even this woman…… I’m furious…… beat her to death……”

The slender woman’s movements might have seemed pitiful. But the emperor mercilessly stomped on Yerena’s hand with his boot. Then he pulled something from his waist.

It was a whip used to subdue beasts. Yerena saw the object that was coiled up and then extended like a snake with a sharp sound, and guessed it was some kind of cord.

As she trembled, wondering exactly what it was, the emperor’s hand rose high.

Whish.

The sound of air being cut sharply rang out, and the whip curved from top to bottom, falling rapidly.

Slash.

“Aah!”

The knotted end of the whip precisely grazed Yerena’s arm as it passed. A scream escaped from her mouth, which had been unable to make proper sounds due to the terrible pain.

The emperor cruelly smirked at Yerena’s scream and raised his arm high again. Once, twice, three times…… The relentless sound of whipping echoed throughout the room without pause.

* * *

As the beautiful hall shook and rocks fell from above, people screamed and ran toward the exit in their drunken state. But the thick doors were locked from the outside, and the servants had already disappeared.

When even the pillars that had seemed embedded in the cave began to collapse, some people gave up and sat down. But most shouted for help and tried to find a way out.

“W-where should we go… ugh!”

Just as a middle-aged man, his face a mess of tears and mucus, looked around in the middle of the hall, a large stone fell on him, and soon the entire ceiling began to collapse. Jewels embedded throughout rained down on the people like a shower. But even these were nothing more than weap*ns that could strike and kill those below.

The middle-aged man tightly closed his eyes at the huge ceiling crashing down on him. But strangely, the pain she expected didn’t come.

Frozen in that state, the middle-aged man only opened his eyes after a long while. He saw the dimly lit interior where the chandeliers had settled and the lights had gone out. Only the luminous pearls that had fallen to the floor and a few precariously lit lamps embedded in the walls illuminated the view. The man barely turned his head to look around, then looked directly above him and sat down in surprise, gasping.

“Huh!”

The collapsing ceiling was right above his head. Stone dust sprinkled on his face. A situation where he could have died if crushed right there. The middle-aged man wondered if he was already dead. Otherwise, how could the collapsing ceiling be fixed in mid-air as if time had stopped?

“How is this……”

The man blinked his eyes and only much later noticed the warm liquid that had soaked his pants. He turned his stiff neck to look around. In the dim light, he saw people in similar states scattered here and there.

But unlike the middle-aged man, most people were looking at a particular spot. He belatedly followed their gaze and turned his head.

Then he saw an exceptionally bright area. The collapsed debris and extinguished lights were similar to his surroundings, which was strange.

‘The Crown Prince!’

The middle-aged man moved his eyes along the light and discovered the figure at its center. Crown Prince Roshan Vistius. Standing in the middle of the golden light, he looked fine, unlike the others who were in panic.

Not a drop of cold sweat, and red eyes that shone brighter than usual. The middle-aged man instinctively knew that this miraculous situation originated from the Crown Prince.

“Ah……”

He had laughed off rumors that the Crown Prince was called the God of Death on the battlefield. Saying that he was just a human, what could he have besides being good with a sword?

But now he couldn’t say such things. The Crown Prince wasn’t human. Whether he was a monster or a being blessed by the Goddess, he clearly possessed power that the man, born as an ordinary human, could never imagine.

Fear and awe simultaneously made the middle-aged man tremble. He forgot about his wet pants and knelt, quietly calling upon the Goddess. And at that moment, the Crown Prince, who had been standing still like a statue, opened his mouth with a faint smile, as if he found the situation absurd.

“His Majesty the Emperor is giving me an unexpected gift.”

* * *

Her dress was torn beyond repair and had become rags. Despite the situation where even her undergarments, not to mention her bare skin, were exposed, Yerena couldn’t compose herself or fix her dress.

The whipping and kicking gradually subsided after pouring down like a storm. But they didn’t stop completely. Yerena, who had given up even curling her body, barely maintained her breath under the emperor’s violence.

“Looks good! Good!”

Despite committing acts no human should dare do, the emperor burst into giggles. His eyes held only madness and filthy pleasure as he trampled someone weaker than himself.

The emperor, tired of whipping, threw the whip on the floor. Then, breathing heavily, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweat-soaked face. He had moved so vigorously that even his long hair was drenched in sweat.

“I should have killed you in front of him. I should have seen that b*stard’s face contort with my own eyes.”

After resting briefly and regulating his breathing, the emperor looked down at Yerena and muttered. A woman who his half-brother Roshan coveted and took away, who should have been in his bedroom long ago. The emperor’s eyes held suppressed anger as he looked at Yerena.

“They said you were dead?”

The emperor had also heard rumors that the princess of Sedas imprisoned in the tower had died. Not only that. He knew the princess was perfectly alive.

“Yes, I’ll kill you. You’re already dead anyway! You filthy thing! Dirty thing!”

He didn’t know the exact reason, but it must be a rumor his half-brother spread to possess this woman. The emperor found this fact unbearably vexing.

“No, I can’t kill you like this. This is how it should have been originally.”

The emperor, who had been kicking Yerena, bent down. He grabbed her face, which was in a prone position, and turned it toward him. His grinning face was no different from a demon’s.

“It was right not to touch your face. Isn’t it too precious?”

The emperor muttered as he admired Yerena’s face. As he had felt before, she was truly an alluring woman.

He roughly released her face. Then he grabbed her and pushed her down on the floor.

Thud. Yerena hit her head on the floor once more from the emperor’s action. Perhaps due to the impact transmitted to her head again, she faintly regained consciousness and opened her eyes.

* * *

Unlike the people who survived in the underground hall, Knox and Hayden had seen their lord use that strange power twice on the battlefield. But even then, he hadn’t used such extensive power as today. They had only seen a momentary golden light emanate from Roshan’s body when surrounded by numerous enemies with a few close aides, and when beheading an enemy general from afar in a battle.

But what their lord showed today was on a different scale. Most people around him witnessed the light coming from Roshan’s body.

Hayden felt awe for his lord’s power but wondered if today’s events would be good for his lord’s future. However, his thoughts were interrupted when one of Frederick’s subordinates, in tatters, urgently found them as soon as they escaped the underground hall.

‘In… intruders. In… intruders in the t-tower……’

Roshan’s expression, which had been perfectly clean without a speck of dust despite emerging from collapsed debris, changed at those words. He immediately began to run. Knox and Hayden followed him.

But Roshan’s movements weren’t human. Hayden couldn’t help but be amazed at his lord’s speed, which seemed impossible to match even on horseback.

“Hayden. Go back and organize the situation with James. The emperor has clearly brought in forces from outside. If we don’t clean up quickly, it will become troublesome.”